Ché mi sento di morir - eng version
by HoshisamaValmor
Summary: Andrés accepts he will die. Sergio doesn't.


**Author's Note:** I know, Italian title and then -eng version- lol

It's strange to write about La Casa de Papel in English, but unfortunately I'm very far from being fluent in Spanish. The only thing I can do is to write a Portuguese version of this fic, which can be found in my page. I have several LCDP fanfics planned, and all will have both language versions available.

 **Disclaimer:** Unfortunately I don't own anything related to La Casa de Papel.

.

* * *

.

Sergio's hands trembled some times. Like anyone else. Fear, stress, anger and exhaustion were, naturally, the biggest causes to lose his strength, his muscles to atrophy and the shaking was a visible sign that he needed to slow down, calm himself, focus on a task that would help him relax.

He was on his third origami bird, his latest quest for relaxation, when Andrés arrived. Most of the money of his latest robbery would finance some of the electronical equipment Sergio would need for the plan. Andrés always liked the feeling of opening a suitcase filled with money; it was cliché, straight out of oldschool mafia movies, arguably practical or the safest means of transport, but it never lost its glamour. And there was no denying the sight fitted his aesthetics to perfection. He _was_ a white collar thief.

He was smiling as always after he greeted Sergio with a hug, the same familiar expression. What wasn't familiar were his hands. Sergio saw his hands shaking, something he neved did. It wasn't something drastic or dramatic, but that in turn denounced it further - small spasms that made his fingers waver as he moved them, hands shaking as if his muscles were stranded or sore after excessive movement.

Sergio looked several times at his hands and at his face while Andrés spoke, frowning in confusion.

"Is something wrong?"

Andrés lifted his gaze from the suitcase; Sergio had clearly interrupted him amidst a comment, and his words didn't match what he had been saying.

"What do you mean?"

"You're shaking," Sergio replied, smiling for some reason.

Andrés looked down, a flash of something in his face before it vanished as fast as it appeared, and waved his hands as if to shake away the tension. He renewed his smile.

"It's becoming a bit annoying," he admitted. "They're starting to shake even when I'm not in front of a pretty woman."

As if he was the type of man whose hands would shake in front of a woman.

"Actually, I was going to ask you about this. No, I don't mean women. You have a considerable amount of contacts on the medical field."

"Yes, of course." Sergio's smile wavered. Andrés knew almost as many doctors as he did, just not as a patient. He wasn't used to that. "But has there been something wrong? Have you been feeling ill?"

"I haven't made many exams, I prefer to leave it to the professionals." He waved emphatically to Sergio, perhaps less theatrically than usual, hands closer to his body as if to keep them safetly under supervision. "I'm going to stay here for some days, so we could try to talk with your friends."

For Andrés to want to see a doctor, something _was_ wrong. But at the same time, immediately jumping at such conclusion seemed overreacting. It shouldn't be reason for alarm, surely. It was Andrés they were talking about. He never got sick, he would barely even catch a cold.

Sergio nodded, smiling more reassuringly again as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

Still, instinctively, his eyes kept going back to Andrés's hands while Sergio removed the money from the suitcase. Andrés didn't help him, talkng and jesting instead.

.

Of all people, after so many years in hospital beds, he should be the one most used to exams and diagnosis. And yet he didn't know how to react to this one. He wasn't used to being on the other end of the news. As a spectator, the one who listened to the results and doesn't know how to help because it's not up to him, it's not about him.

He _was_ used at being powerless, though.

Ironically, Andrés hands didn't shake while he held the papers filled with grids and numbers and reports delivered by the Ukranian doctor of Sergio's upmost trust.

"May we speak in private?" the doctor requested. Perfectly normal - medical information was private. But something...

"Is something wrong?" Sergio asked, meddling in business that weren't his to meddle. He looked at the two of them as if that would help change the answer that was mercilessly creeping through his mind even before any of them spoke. He wanted to clasp the papers away from Andrés hands, but the same sixth sense that seemed to have been triggered in him and made him dread the answer, also told him he would not be able to steal the results from his grip.

"What the fuck is miopathy of Helmer?"

Sergio turned to the doctor. An emptiness seemed to take over, and it was ruthless. It felt like a physical pain. Andrés flipped through the pages slowly, back to the grids and reports to try and find the answer to his own question. There were too many paper sheets, as if the doctor had willingly added extra information, grids and values to use for comparision, eerily antecipating some form of denial.

Miopathy was not good. Muscle malady. Adding a specific name narrowed it down to a specific variation. Rarer, most likely. When it came to illnesses, _'rarer'_ often meant... no.

The doctor explained by simple terms what Andrés was likely reading in all medical embellished definitions in the report. Sergio didn't doubt the doctor, but he couldn't believe him. The words became distant, as if they weren't actually being spoken. Maybe they were just echoes of words Sergio had thought, in his worst fears, that negative little voice that wants to undermine all hope. He wasn't sure if he was hearing or imagining them.

He couldn't accept them if he wasn't sure they had actually been pronounced.

"I'm sorry, but because it is rare, there are no medicinas," the doctor continued, his Spanish too clear despite the thick accent. He was deliberately forcing the truth out. Sergio wasn't imagining any of it, he was listening to it.

He couldn't bring himself to look at Andrés. He asked questions, not as many as Sergio would have liked to make _(Why? What do you mean? How can you be sure? Why? Why now? Why him?)_ , but his own voice was strangled in his throat and it was starting to scratch and hurt him in its need to be free.

Andrés asked the worst one.

The doctor nodded solemnly. "I'm afraid is quite serious. Other cases have not survived past twenty four months."

The nearby table kept Sergio from losing balance. The vertigo didn't fade, instead it only increased to a point of sickness.

This couldn't be happpening.

There was something wrong. Something had to be wrong. How could he be sick? How could he have a degenerative disease? Out of the blue, out of nowhere, no symptoms...

None that he knew of.

Only long minutes after the doctor had left did Sergio finally gathered the strength to look up to Andrés. He didn't want to face him. He didn't want to face the shock, the denial, the pain, the fear.

He couldn't face the lack of any of these.

Andrés was avoiding him too, his gaze focused on a distant spot on the opposite side of the room. The papers were discarded on the table and he picked a glass instead, pouring himself some whiskey. His expression was heavy, weightened down by the thoughts he didn't allow to express or likely admit.

He didn't look like a man who had just learned he was dying. He seemed only mildly inconvenienced.

That was an overstatement; and a part of Sergio knew he was being unfair and selfish for even thinking that way. But he couldn't think rationally right now, his brain reduced to a mantra of senseless questions.

Why? Why now? Why him? Why?

"Why?" Andrés asked him in return. Sergio hadn't realized he had spoke outloud. "Why what?"

Sergio tried to take a deep breath; the air stumbled in his sore throat and made him gasp instead. His vision blurred suddenly, and once again his voice was strangled, drowned before he could utter words.

The silence lingered between them. When Sergio had managed to steady his breathing and ensure his voice wouldn't crack under the pressure, Andrés spoke:

"You won't take more than twenty four months to finish the plan, will you?"

The tone was serious, yet the thin thread of irony was too much.

"Stop that," Sergio snapped.

Without looking at him, Andrés scoffed, as if he knew exactly why he had been avoiding to speak.

"What? Do you want me to throw myself in your arms, hugging you in tears and sobs? Me?"

"Andrés, stop that!"

The paper sheets snapped harshly in the air as they were whipped off the table. Andrés turned to him at last, facing Sergio's laboured breathing, the tears in his eyes, the uncontrolled hands that wanted to grab, rip, destroy something to relieve the tension and the pain.

Rather than immediately snapping back at him, Andrés swallowed hard. The glass in his hand trembled, but it was hard to pin the blame on the disease that would kill him.

Sergio felt like he was being teared apart.

"You can't..." he tried to say, but the words seemed to finally give up.

"Can you explain that to me, then? I'm an intelligent man, but apparently my brain must be failing me. What's those results there?"

"Can't you just stop that?" _What? What do you want?,._ the voice in his own mind demanded, siding with Andrés. _What do you expect him to do?_ "You can't act this way. This is serious."

Andrés didn't allow himself to compromise his posture. _That. That is what I want him to do. I want him to react. I want him to feel what I'm feeling._ An answer that revealed pure jealousy, demanding one reaction as more correct than another.

"Really now? Tell me, is it perhaps your name that's on those pages? Are those your exams?" He crossed the distance in a couple of large steps and picked a handful of the scattered papers from the floor. Some of the whiskey spilled from his glass from the harshness. "Can you explain me what all this means, explain me what I haven't yet understood? This is just as a new experience to yourself as it is to me, little brother. It's not your name on these results, so do you think that means I take it any less seriously?" He suddenly changed subject, as if to easen the mood with a jest. "Wait, is my name written on here?"

"Andrés!"

"Sergio!" he shouted back. "You're the one that needs to stop."

They'd sound like two kids arguing were it not for the seriousness in their voices and the weight of their words.

"Be practical. Do you think I want to die? Well fuck me, I don't. But apparently that's what it says here."

It was his time to swallow hard. "That's not what I..."

"What? What the fuck do you want then?"

"I can't!"

Andrés straightened his body, his face frowning. Sergio was shaking, struggling and failing to make sense, to express what he really wanted, what he really needed to.

First his father. Who worked and worked and worked and tried and tried his best to give all the care to his helpless son, did his very best to make his naive son believe he would be alright because father would work all he could, even if in reality he was robbing banks to try to give his helpless son a better life, and his useless son could only add reasons for him to end up being killed. The useless, fucking helpless son could do nothing to help his father and instead he just brought his death. And now his brother was dying and once again, the useless helpless man he had become was just there, witnessing it, crying over it like the same useless ruin he had always been.

He couldn't stand being helpless anymore and seeing everyone he held dear dying! He wanted Andrés to understand that, to understand why it was important, why he couldn't stand having another person die and be helpless to stop it. Why he wanted to selfishly throw his own crippling, asphyfixating fear and pain into someone else.

Why couldn't he say it out loud?

Because he was useless.

Because he was helpless.

The tears flowed in contrast with the words he couldn't speak. Rather than surpress them further, Sergio's shaking hand moved to his face and removed his glasses, hiding his face as he sobbed.

He couldn't face Andrés.

And the reason why Andrés couldn't face him before became clear when he stepped closer, lowering the glass and the papers on the table before wrapping his arms around Sergio and pulling him close.

He wasn't a sociopath. Andrés had defects - God, he had them enough to spare - but he wasn't a sociopath, not the one he made an effort to make others believe he was. Maybe it was Sergio's own naivety that made him think that way; but then he saw and felt moments like these. He was affected by emotions. He knew how to recognize them and tune himself to them. Perhaps feeling them himself by proxy.

He didn't appreciate it. He didn't appreciate not having control. And feeling emotion brought by someone else was a ripple on his control.

Sergio's heartbeat slowed down, stabilizing at a pace that allowed him to breathe. After a sudden coughing fit, he managed to take deep breaths, exhaling slowly against Andrés shoulder.

"I'll search," he said, voice hoarse and pained from all the consecutive straining he had forced upon it. He swallowed and inhaled again, straighteing himself back up and lowering his arms. He recalled his forlorned glasses still in his hand and returned them to their place, adjusting them against his nose. He lift his moist face and red-swollen eyes to meet Andrés's. They were gleaming, two beads of tears betraying him on the corner of his eyes but two he would never allow to fall.

Andrés felt his pain. More than his own, he was feeling Sergio's pain. It hurt _him_.

"I'll search. I'll search, I'll find something," Sergio repeated. "There has to be some treatment, some medication. In the meantime, you'll repeat all the exams. There could have been a mistake, or something else might have happened. Maybe a new doctor will be familiar with the condition and will help us." Russia. It was the most logical place to start. Andrés had taken him to Russia when he was younger to find better treatments. Now he would be the one to take Andrés there, and they _would_ find something. Anything.

Andrés familiar smile returned. He locked a hand on Sergio's nape, an encouraging hold he would do when they were younger.

"See? Practical."

.

It was all shaken so simply, in the simplest way in the world.

On the very night before the heist, his answer to Andrés's demand was to remind him why nothing would go wrong. Regardless of the reality of things, regardless of the endless ways it _could_ go wrong, it wouldn't. They were the resistence. They had fought too much and too long for this.

So he sang. What better, simpler way was there to make his answer clear? Andrés understood, even if both knew he wouldn't be accept that as an answer, the promise he wanted Sergio do make.

And in the simplest way, his very words reminded _him_ instead of what would go wrong. His voice failed before he could sing them, leaving Andrés to speak them alone, their weight suddenly too grounding and too much.

 _Ché mi sento di morir._

Sergio averted his eyes. Andrés expression had moved on to acceptance - defiance, almost, for one second, but it came down to acceptance. It was inevitable, and while both knew it, Sergio still tried to keep it at bay, focusing on the plan, focusing on the present an the near future. The heist was all the future he could or wanted to perceive. Beyond that, it wasn't important.

It was too important. So he had to try to hide from the truth.

Andrés had granted Sergio's silent wish to not address the reality of his condition frequently, or at all. The continuous orders of Retroxil were more than enough proof of the inevitability of his death approaching mercilessly regardless of how much Sergio wanted to forget it.

They had to focus on the present. Andrés reminded him of it with the song just as Sergio wanted to do. They had to focus on what was important _now._

They could steal the time from the police, but he still wouldn't be able to steal more time for Andrés.

.

the end

.

* * *

Author's Note: Season 1 finale is one of the most amazing things ever done.  
Written to a bunch of different songs, but obviously centered around 16 versions of Bella Ciao.

Thanks for reading, reviews and corrections are encouraged.

.


End file.
